January 05,
2015 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Sputnik"
- Russia's incisive military
intervention in Syria has succeeded in not only
stabilizing the Arab state and salvaging it from a
terrorist takeover. Russia's maneuver also exposed
the foreign-fueled nature of the conflict - as a
criminal covert war of aggression for regime change.

To varying
degrees, the complicity of Washington, Britain and
France in sponsoring an illegal insurgency
against the elected government of President Bashar
al-Assad has been uncovered through Russia's
military intervention.

So too
exposed — even more so — in the criminal conspiracy
are the West's regional client regimes. Recep Tayyip
Erdogan's Turkey has been shown through Russian
airstrikes to be up to its neck in running oil and
weapons smuggling rackets to support the terrorist
networks in Syria.

And the
other regime exposed by Russia is Saudi Arabia. This
explains why the oil-rich autocratic monarchy is now
trying to inflame the region with sectarian
conflict, with the execution of the Shiite cleric
Sheikh Nimr al-Nimir last weekend.

Sheikh Nimr
was revered among the region's Shiite Muslims
for his courageous, peaceful protests
against oppression under the fundamentalist rulers
of Saudi Arabia — the House of Saud, who profess an
extremist version of Islam known as Wahhabism.

In the
Wahhabi mentality, Shiites, Christians and others
are considered "infidels" who should be put to death
by the sword. It is no coincidence that many of the
so-called jihadists fighting in Syria to overthrow
the Assad government also subscribe to Wahhabism.
There is clear evidence to show that the terror
groups such as Daesh (Islamic State) and al Nusra
Front are funded by the Wahhabi rulers of Saudi
Arabia.

The gratuitous
killing of Sheikh Nimr came after months of appeals
for clemency. The appeals were made not only by the
government of Iran — the main Shiite power in the
Middle East — but also from several international
rights groups, owing to the dubious judicial process
in Saudi Arabia and the abundant evidence attesting
to Sheikh Nimr's innocence. That the House of Saud
went ahead with his execution thus points to a
deliberate act to provoke regional passions and
in particular those of Iran.

The
torching of Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran, the
war of words, and the severance of diplomatic ties
between Saudi Arabia and Iran strongly suggest that
the explosive reaction was premeditated. Now Arab
allies of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Sudan, the United
Arab Emirates, among others, are following suite
by cutting diplomatic channels with Tehran. Some
commentators are even wondering if an all-out war
will erupt in the region.

Significantly, the mayhem unleashed by the Saudi
execution of Sheikh Nimr appears to have irked
Washington and other Western powers who patronize
the Saudi rulers. Earlier this week, the New York
Times reported that the Obama administration was
"caught by surprise" and "expressed anger at the
Saudis… for negligent disregard for how it would
inflame the region".

So why did
the Saudi rulers decide to plunge the region
into turmoil? Because Russia's military intervention
in Syria has seriously spoiled the foreign
conspiracy for regime change in that country.
Furthermore, Russia's defeats against the array
of illegally armed groups, such as Daesh and Nusra
and their various offshoots, has exposed the sponsor
links of these terror groups to foreign governments,
in particular those in Ankara and Riyadh.

American
political analyst Randy Martin says: "What seems
to be emerging now is the repercussion from Russia
blowing the cover off the conflict in Syria.
Russia's military operations against the terror
networks have dramatically exposed the Wahhabi Saudi
rulers for what they are."

The analyst
added: "Now that the House of Saud is exposed in its
criminal machinations in Syria and its association
with known terror groups, the Saudis have decided
that their next best option is to incite a full-on
war with Shiite Iran, and possibly even the
Russians."

Martin
pointed to the Russian airstrike on December 25 that
eliminated the leadership of the jihadist militia,
Jaish al-Islam, also known as Army of Islam. The
strike in the militia's stronghold of East Ghouta,
near the Syrian capital Damascus, killed its leader
Zahran Alloush and other commanders.

Four days
later, on December 29, Saudi Arabia's foreign
minister Adel al-Jubeir publicly condemned the
Russian air strike against Jaish al-Islam. Speaking
in Riyadh, the Saudi minister said the killing would
complicate the forthcoming peace talks on Syria due
to take place later this month in Geneva. Al-Jubeir
expressed dismay, telling reporters: "I don't know
what the Russians have in mind."

The
official Saudi reaction to the killing of Zahran
Alloush and other Jaish al-Islam members clearly
illustrates the involvement of Saudi Arabia
with known terror groups in Syria. The Jaish
al-Islam militia is known to share fighters and
weapons with the al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra,
which is an officially designated terrorist group,
according to the US government and the European
Union.

Russia's
military intervention in Syria has done two things.
It has, firstly, put paid to the covert terror war
that the West and its regional allies have been
waging surreptitiously in Syria since March 2011
for the purpose of regime change. This result has
thus made the political track the only feasible
alternative by which the Western powers can hope
to achieve their long-held objective of regime
change in Syria. Hence Geneva.

Saudi
Arabia, the region's hardliner in the regime-change
project, is opposed to the political option, which
has been earnestly pursued by US Secretary of State
John Kerry over the past three months, since Russia
began its air operations in Syria. "Saudi officials
have long said they think that Mr Kerry's effort is
doomed to failure, and that was before Sunday's
diplomatic breach with Iran," noted the New York
Times.

The second
thing that Russia's military intervention has done,
as analyst Randy Martin points out, is that the
links of Saudi Arabia to terror groups have been
laid bare for all to see.

This week, the
Saudi ambassador to the United Nations, Abdallah al-Mouallimi,
claimed that the regional war of words with Iran
will not deflect from his country's participation
in the Geneva peace talks on Syria.

However,
that is a just a public-relations fig leaf. The
Saudi rulers find political negotiations anathema
because that would mean talking with their "infidel"
enemy of Iran, thus giving the latter more political
esteem in the region, and also because the House
of Saud persists with the ultimatum that Syria's
President Assad "has to go".

It is
for this reason that the Saudis last month said they
retain the military option to invade Syria to oust
Assad and why the oil-rich kingdom set up a
34-nation "anti-terror" military coalition with a
license to invade any country where it deems a
"terror threat" exists.

In other
words, what has emerged is Saudi Arabia's
belligerent policy in the region and its collusion
with terror groups. And it is Russia's decisive,
devastating anti-terror military intervention
in Syria that has uncovered these nefarious
connections.

That is why
the Saudi rulers went ahead with the execution
of the Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. The chaos
and bloodletting they hope to unleash is intended
to cover up their terror tracks in Syria.

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